Obama Peddles a Dangerous Fantasy About the Debt Crisis

Fiscal Policy: President Obama now says the deficit problem is all but fixed, so we can stop all this unpleasant talk about spending cuts and get on with government spending. Maybe this is good politics, but it’s reckless policy.

In the run-up to his State of the Union speech, Obama was running around telling everyone how we’ve already “cut our deficit by more than $2.5 trillion,” and are now “more than halfway towards the $4 trillion in deficit reduction that economists . .. say we need to stabilize our debt.”

Clearly Obama wants all the dreary talk of deficits off the table. That way he can attack Republicans who try to impose deeper spending cuts, and push for more federal “investments” to help grow the economy.

But there are just two problems with Obama’s claim.

First, despite what Obama says, the debt crisis is nowhere near fixed — as anyone who’s looked at the report from Obama’s own debt commission would know.

That report opened with this stark statement: “Our nation is on an unsustainable fiscal path.” Left unchecked, it said, the rising debt “will put America at risk,” and that “continued inaction is not a viable option.”